September 11, 2008

9/11: It's Happening Again...

Liberal bloggers are growing increasingly disgusted by what they perceive to be John McCain's willingness to lie. The netroots were already annoyed by Sarah Palin's distortions of her role in opposing the Bridge to Nowhere, but the McCain camp's latest ad has sent them over the top. Liberal bloggers are furiously criticizing the McCain camp for releasing this ad, which falsely implies that Barack Obama wants children to learn "about sex before learning to read." Josh Marshall complains: "This is ugly stuff. And this is an ugly person. There's clearly no level of sleaze this guy won't stoop to to win this election."

Meanwhile, the frustration in the liberal blogosphere is palpable. Lefty bloggers feel like they've seen this movie before -- a GOP candidate who uses gimmicks ("Celebrity" ads; lipstick) in order to throw the Dem candidate off-message. Many bloggers are complaining that Obama is spending too much time responding to McCain's attacks and isn't launching enough attacks of his own. David Kurtz is exasperated:

"The McCain camp is running an ad linking Obama to sex and children -- and Obama is taking valuable time at the beginning of his speech to explain how he wasn't really indirectly calling Sarah Palin a pig? As [Paul] Begala says: Attack! Attack! Attack!"

MCCAIN: Defender Of Pedophiles?

Liberal bloggers are pushing back against McCain's misleading ad claiming that Obama wants children to learn "about sex before learning to read." They are pointing out that the legislation in question actually "gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators":

• Open Left's David Sirota: "McCain has done something I never thought I would see: He has sponsored a new television commercial that effectively declares his support for child molestor rights. I'm dead serious here: The ad explicitly criticizes Obama for supporting state legislation that the Kansas City Star notes was designed to give 'schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.' So by basic logical deduction, then, McCain's ad attacking Obama for supporting that bill means McCain would have opposed it -- meaning he would have taken the side of the Pedophilia Lobby that wants young children to not understand when they are being molested."
• TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt: "So, John McCain opposes teaching kindergartners how to recognize molestation. John McCain doesn't care about preventing sex assaults of children? If I were a parent of a kindergartner, he wouldn't get my vote based on that alone."
• TAPPED's Adam Serwer: "Yesterday the McCain camp released an ad accusing Obama of wanting to teach 'comprehensive sex education to kindergarteners.' But of course, the bill Obama supported would actually teach kids how to avoid things like 'inappropriate touching.' [...] Does the McCain campaign not believe children should be taught to avoid 'inappropriate touching' or sexual exploitation? If so, why?"

Conservative blogger Ross Douthat also criticizes the ad: "[The ad] feels more appropriate to a failing, flailing right-wing campaign than a confident, rising conservative ticket. [...] There's no reason to think that the bill envisioned five-year-olds putting condoms on a banana, which is the image that the McCain ad seems designed to summon up. Moreover, Obama didn't write or co-sponsor the legislation (he voted for it in a party-line vote) and it never became law, so calling it 'his one accomplishment' on education is just false. And even if aspects of the sex-ed claim are technically defensible, the whole thing just feels bullshitty and gross -- like a parody of a culture-war ad. I have no problem with campaigning on culture war issues, and God knows Obama has vulnerabilities, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, and this ad falls into the second category."

However, conservative blogger Jim Geraghty defends the ad: "McCain's ad is right on the sex education bill. [...] Having now looked at the text of the sex education bill in question...it's clear that one of its key purposes was to change existing law that said 'Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades 6 through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention, transmission and spread of AIDS' to 'Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.' Yes, the legislation permitted parents to take their children out of the class. But that was already existing law."

MCCAIN II: How Low Can He Go?

Liberal bloggers (and a certain "conservative of doubt") are denouncing McCain's recent tactics in some of their harshest words to date:

• TPM's Marshall: "All politicians stretch the truth, massage it into the best fit with their message. But, let's face it, John McCain is running a campaign almost entirely based on straight up lies. Not just exaggerations or half truths but the sort of straight up, up-is-down mind-blowers we've become so accustomed to from the current occupants of the White House. And today McCain comes out with this rancid, race-baiting ad based on another lie. Willie Horton looks mild by comparison. (And remember, President George H.W. Bush never ran the Willie Horton ad himself. It was an outside group. He wasn't willing to degrade himself that far.) [...] This is ugly stuff. And this is an ugly person. There's clearly no level of sleaze this guy won't stoop to to win this election."
• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "For me, this surreal moment -- like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign? So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. [...] McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States."
• The New Republic's John B. Judis: "McCain himself has clearly demonstrated that he'll do anything to win. In 2000, he ran an honorable campaign. Leave aside what he advocated -- he tried to win on the merits. This year, he has been willing to distort and lie about his opponents. It really started with the way he dealt with Mitt Romney's positions on the Iraq war. But he has gone all out since the convention. That, combined with his choice of entirely unproven Palin for vice-president, has been enough to remove whatever lingering sympathy I had for the man."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "Steve Schmidt has obviously been responsible for some of the recent change in tone of the McCain campaign, but it didn't start with him. It started with McCain himself, who, in the days leading up to Super Tuesday, cheerfully and repeatedly smeared Mitt Romney as a guy who wanted to surrender to the terrorists in Iraq. It was a plainly bogus charge, but it was one that McCain peddled without compunction for an entire week -- and it was one of the things that put a final nail in Romney's coffin. McCain's revolting campaign style isn't something he had to be talked into by a cabal of ruthless advisors. He genuinely likes this stuff."
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Every single day now we are seeing the deficiencies in John McCain's character: He's a liar. First he puts out his disgusting, slimy ad that attacks Barack Obama because he wanted to protect children from pedophiles, and now this. [...] John McCain likes to talk sweet, high-minded words about honor and character, but his words and actions show exactly how dishonorable he is."
• TAPPED's Mori Dinauer: "The campaign [McCain] is waging ranks with the worst of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. Whether it's sex-ed, lipstick, or 'destroying' Palin, it's clear that John McCain is prepared to whip up as much disgusting cultural rage as he needs to win that 51 percent and that, my friends, is where this dishonorable man intends to take this election."

MCCAIN III: Enough With The Freak Show!

Liberal bloggers are accusing the McCain camp of trying to make this election about trivialities instead of substantive issues:

• Salon's Glenn Greenwald: "We're fighting multiple wars; our oldest and most established financial institutions are on the verge of collapse; we've fundamentally transformed and then dismantled our constitutional framework over the last eight years, etc. etc. But the Right and their media partners are striving to ensure that our election this year is going to be dominated and determined by whether Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a 'pig' when he invoked a meaningless cliche. It isn't surprising that the McCain campaign wants this sort of tawdry, Freak Show/Reality Show vapidity to determine the outcome of the election."
• Firedoglake's Blue Texan: "The McSame campaign wants to make this election about petty personality issues and trivialities -- their campaign manager said so publicly. It's clear -- they want to talk about campaign ads and vapid People Magazine profiles and cheesy catchphrases and nicknames. They don't want to talk about the highest unemployment rate in 5 years. They don't want to talk about staggering job losses. They don't want to talk about the skyrocketing deficit. [...] They don't want to talk about any of these things because on the economy, McSame-Palin is lockstep with Bush-Cheney. They are trickle-down, Club-for-Growth, tax-cuts-cure-all Republicans. And they simply don't have an answer to any of these problems."
• The Huffington Post's Bob Cesca: "It's happening again. Regardless of the outcome of this thing, it's clear that half of America is falling for the same superficial trickery that gave us eight years of George W. Bush. You know the routine. Who do you want to have a beer with? Who is more plainspoken? Who would you like to drive your kids to hockey? Only this time around, America is exponentially worse off than it was in 2000 or 2004, which only makes the degree to which certain voters are being tricked all the more infuriating and incomprehensible."

OBAMA: Don't Just Respond; Attack!

A growing number of liberal bloggers are complaining that the Obama camp is overly concerned with responding to McCain's attacks and isn't launching enough attacks of its own:

• TPM's Kurtz: "I can't understand the rationale for Obama to clarify his 'lipstick on a pig' remark first thing this morning at the top of his speech. [...] It was pointed, sure. But so what? Yes, Obama sort of laughed it off and dismissed the criticism with some elan. He wasn't overly defensive about it, but he was still playing defense. His whole orientation is wrong. Today, you come up with a good new line. You play off of the previous day's good line. You keep moving the ball forward. The McCain camp is running an ad linking Obama to sex and children -- and Obama is taking valuable time at the beginning of his speech to explain how he wasn't really indirectly calling Sarah Palin a pig? As Begala says: Attack! Attack! Attack!"
• Greenwald: "A one-day complaint from Obama -- as effectively formulated as today's message was -- is nowhere near sufficient to combat these tactics, which are only going to continue and intensify between now and the election. It's a message he needs to sharpen and repeat daily, and turn into an offensive weapon ('they want you to pay attention to shallow sideshows to make you forget what they've done to the country over the last 8 years')."
• Mark Kleiman: "In politics, you can't win defending yourself; you win by counter-attacking. There's a crucial distinction here between refuting each individual false charge from McCain and branding McCain as a serial liar with no honor who is morally unfit for the Presidency."

MyDD's Todd Beeton responds to Kurtz: "I agree with David Kurtz that, sure, [Obama]'s inherently on defense here and I'd much prefer to see him on offense but let's not forget, Barack does this sort of rapid response very well. [...] Now, it's true that the McCain camp's jumping on Barack's 'lipstick on a pig' comment...has put Barack on defense. Sure, they've been able to drive the narrative for another day or two, distracting the media, as though with a shiny object, away from anything critical of Sarah Palin. But does this strategy strike anyone else as unsustainable? Is that really all McCain has, the hope to put Obama on defense every day to win 'the message war'? Superficially, the McCain campaign's move may be offensive but it is a strategy borne out of a position of weakness, namely that they know that if this campaign becomes about issues, they lose and if there is any real scrutiny of Sarah Palin beyond the cult of personality coverage they lose."

Interestingly, conservative blogger Patrick Ruffini seems to agree with Kurtz: "The netroots is engaged in some spirited discussion about the lameness of Obama's responses to Palin. But the problem, and what I believe this video gets at, is that Democrats look at everything about negative politics through the prism of response rather than attack, defense rather than offense. [...] The Democrats were caught off-guard by the [Swift Boat Veterans for Truth] in 2004 because they learned wrong lessons from '88. Forcefully responding ('Bring. It. On.') was something of a meta-narrative for [John] Kerry. But they forgot that response wasn't nearly enough, and done wrong, you can easily fall into traps your opponent carefully lays out. To control the agenda, you have to unleash new, original, unprovoked attacks. The media favors new narratives. If your whole frame is simply responding to the other guy's narratives, he controls the agenda, not you."

Ruffini continues: "Now, this isn't Ruffini saying don't respond. It's about responding firmly and with the facts, but never blowing your top and getting rattled. And it's about maintaining a 2-to-1 ratio of salable attacks to responses. [...] Obama seems to be falling into the trap of response-centrism. If only they could respond the right way, they figure, all will be well. But it won't be. Because the game they are playing is reactive. Instead of changing the subject off Palin by launching some explosive new attack on McCain, all they do is respond, respond, respond. And the story, day after day, is Democratic Presidential nominee responds to Republican Vice Presidential nominee. The optics of that stink for them."

Open Left's Matt Stoller praises Ruffini's post: "Patrick Ruffini at the Next Right makes some really good points about the contours of an attack and response driven campaign. I don't agree with Ruffini most of the time, but he seems on point here."

OBAMA II: Yes, He Did Call Her A Pig!

Conservative bloggers continue to accuse Obama of calling Palin a pig:

• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "The Dalibama has had to spend two days first attacking Palin and then defending his slam at Sarah Palin as a pig by denying that's what he meant, though everyone in his audience and across the country instantly knew that is exactly what he meant. His refusal to own his blunder is not going to help him in the last with the independents and Hillary Dems he had already angered via his campaign's abetting of the first wave of attacks on Palin."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "Barack Obama is now calling out the press for having the temerity to report his 'lipstick' and 'old fish' insults against his opponents. He's right to sense profound danger in this episode to his electoral ambitions. That's because it's offered voters an insight into his character that isn't flattering. [...] We're learning how Barack responds when, for the first time, his campaign isn't clearly ascendant. It's revealing, but it isn't pretty (wasn't the press telling us that McCain was the one with the temperament problem?!)."
• Geraghty: "Barack Obama probably didn't mean to imply that Sarah Palin is a pig with his lipstick comment yesterday. It's just a really big coincidence that when he's facing a woman opponent, the most eloquent and gifted orator in the Democratic Party in recent memory just happens to pick really awkward metaphors that have secondary meanings that many women would find demeaning. [...] It's just unthinkable that a guy who punctuates his speeches with gestures from Jay-Z videos could ever exhibit a less than appropriate level of respect for women opponents."

PALIN: Banning Books?

Several liberal bloggers are buzzing about a new ABC News report entitled, "Did Sarah Palin Try to Ban Library Books?":

• Firedoglake's Christy Hardin Smith: "Still wondering what books Sarah Palin wanted to ban? Brian Ross, of ABC News, reports -- and doesn't get any answers on specific titles from Palin or her pals. But he does ascertain that Palin herself admits to asking about book banning on two separate occasions. If, as her pal in the report says, it was just a rhetorical question, why did Sarah Palin ask the town librarian, on three separate occasions, according to McClatchy, whether she would consider banning books in the Wasilla libarary? Doesn't seem so rhetorical if it's a repeat concern, now does it? The librarian can't recall Palin mentioning specific titles, although a local reporter says that Palin had three specific ones in mind. Why raise book banning if you have no specific books in mind? Seems odd to me. Shouldn't someone get John McCain on the record as to whether he thinks banning library books is a good idea? And if so, what books he would recommend banning? And why? I'd sure like to hear his answers."
• Obsidian Wings' publius: "To believe Palin's version [of the story], you must think (1) she was just casually asking a rhetorical question; and (2) the subsequent firing of the librarian had nothing to do with the librarian's sharp resistance to Palin's question. The key part of the ABC News story, though, is that Palin's prior -- and bat do-do crazy -- church had started making some noise about banning books from the library around the time she was elected. That is, removing certain books (e.g., 'Pastor, I am Gay') had been on the church's radar at the time, and the church had been instrumental in getting her elected. Thus, it makes sense that Palin would -- upon taking power -- look into removing books. All in all, it's a pretty strong data point against her."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "Palin became mayor, her church was interested in censorship, and soon after, Palin asked a 'rhetorical' question about how books might be excluded from the public library. When the librarian resisted, she was, at least initially, fired. The line from the McCain campaign has been that Palin never had any interest whatsoever in banning library books. That seems increasingly difficult to believe."

PALIN II: Fowler's Foul Play

Conservative bloggers are criticizing SC Dem Chair Carol Fowler for saying that Palin's "primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion":

• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "If you want a real nasty attack on Sarah Palin to get indignant about, try this bit from the charming Carol Fowler of the South Carolina Democratic Party. She said that Palin's 'primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion.' No amount of lipstick can make this pig look prettier."
• Liebau: "The remark is so ugly, so graceless that, along with all the other garbage launched at Governor Palin, it's providing a window into the soul of many in the Democrat Party. Even if someone took every charge of unfairness launched by Democrats at the Swift Boat vets at face value, anything the Dems could argue the Vets did has nothing on all of this. Stay classy, Democrats. Do you really think you're helping your candidate by these over-the-top smears?"
• RedState's Brian Faughnan: "The Democratic party once held itself up proudly as the party that recognized and saluted achievements by women. But Sarah Palin seems to be the cultural touchstone that shows how people really view gender equity. And for Carol Fowler and many other Democrats, Sarah Palin can be reduced to a statement about abortion. Mother, small business owner, Mayor, Governor, reformer -- none of it matters because she stands in the way of Democrats gaining power. This is not your mother's Democratic party. For any real feminists left in the Democratic party -- don't let the door hit you on the way out."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "[This is] probably just a case of the repulsive Fowler clan being their typical repulsive selves. If you're willing to laugh at the thought of a hurricane spoiling the GOP convention by wrecking New Orleans, why wouldn't you believe 23,000 people turned out today in Virginia simply because they're jazzed that Palin didn't flush her Down's baby down the toilet like so many more enlightened, progressive women would have?"
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "My sense is that intelligent Democrats -- there are some -- realize that their hate campaign against Governor Palin has turned into a train wreck."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Craving Approval From Hosts

Atrios:

"Watching Jonathan Alter on with [Rachel] Maddow I'm reminded of an additional importance of having liberal hosts (radio and tv), aside from the fact that maybe they'll actually reach some viewers at home. I think that unless you really steel yourself for combat mode, it's generally human nature to try to find common ground with people you're talking to. So when people go chat with [Bill] O'Reilly or Hugh Hewitt they're, to some degree, trying to find those areas of agreement. When mainstream center lefties like Alter go on Maddow's show, they're much more likely to be aggressive advocates of a more liberal position than they would otherwise. Host approval helps reinforce the view."

LEST WE FORGET: Nobody's Impressed By Your Laundry List

Cracked's Ross Wolinsky lists "The 10 Commandments of Facebook," the first of which is: "Thou Shalt Not List Every Movie, TV Show, Band and Book You Have Ever Heard Of In Your Profile":

"Do you like Radiohead, A Confederacy of Dunces, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Do you enjoy watching The Office and Family Guy? Of course you do -- everyone likes those things. Why make it a point to express your enthusiasm for things that everyone likes?

Maybe you're cooler than that. Maybe you're into cool, obscure bands like Fela Kuti and Einstürzende Neubauten. Awesome, dude -- you have impeccable taste in shit that nobody has ever heard of. Congratulations.

Everyone knows that a person is only as good as their taste in books, movies, bands and TV shows, but what exactly do you hope to accomplish by posting a 5,000-item laundry list? Are you going to forge deep and meaningful new relationships with people based on a mutual appreciation of Entourage, or sever ties with good friends because they AREN'T into Fela Kuti? If you feel the need to share this information with the world (and I know that you do), keep it as short as possible. Remember: You're not going to impress anyone. It's the Internet. Nobody is impressed by ANYTHING on the Internet."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at September 11, 2008 01:34 PM